According to one of Elon Musk’s gamer buddies, the controversy surrounding Musk’s use of boosted characters in Diablo IV and Path of Exile 2 is a big misunderstanding. In a DM exchange on X, Musk told streamer NikoWrex that he did, indeed, pay people to play video games for him. According to Musk, everyone at the highest level is doing it so it’s fine.
At the same time he was preparing to sit at the right hand of President Donald Trump, the world’s richest man was beefing with people online about video games. At the beginning of the year, Musk did a livestream of his Path of Exile 2 character on X. It was weird.
According to high-level players with a lot of knowledge of the game, Musk didn’t seem to know what he was doing. And his account had tell-tale signs of a guy who’d paid to have someone else level it. The gamers called him out and Musk began to publicly fight the allegations. At one point Grimes, the mother of three of his children, even took to X to defend Musk’s gaming honor.
Two days ago, NikoWrex posted a YouTube video that he said cleared the whole thing up. Musk won’t respond to questions from The Wall Street Journal about his gaming habits but he will, apparently, answer a DM from a gaming buddy on X. With Musk’s permission, NikoWrex posted the transcript of a conversation he’d had with the billionaire on X where he asked him about the controversy outright.
“Have you level boosted (had someone had someone else play your accounts) and/or purchased gear/ resources for PoE 2 and Diablo 4?” NikoWrex asked.
Musk responded with a “100 percent” emoji. “But when I post a video of a game or am streaming, that’s 100% me,” Musk clarified. “It’s impossible to beat the players in Asia if you don’t, as they do!”
Musk styles himself as a master gamer, it’s a big part of his personality and personal brand. The use of boosted characters in games like Diablo and PoE 2 isn’t unheard of, but it is controversial. Getting a character to max level can be a grueling task that takes hundreds of hours and gamers have long questioned how it was that Musk was able to get characters up that high while hanging out with Trump and helming multiple companies.
NikoWrex asked if Musk intended to take credit for leveling a character to max. “No,” Musk said. “Never claimed that. The top accounts in Diablo or PoE require multiple people playing the account to win the leveling race.”
Musk is admitting the central claim of the gaming community’s critiques against him: He isn’t leveling the accounts himself. It’s weird. He could have, if he wanted to, diffused a lot of the drama by just stating this clearly upfront. Instead, he chose to beef with prominent gaming streamers like Asmongold when they called him out.
NikoWrex asked about the fight with Asmongold. Musk unfollowed the streamer on X, pulled his blue check, and leaked his DMs without his permission. He seemed to imply that Asmongold wasn’t his own person because he worked with editors.
“Asmongold seemed to require permission from others to stream on X, suggesting he doesn’t control his own destiny” Musk told NikoWrex. Musk then touted several of his achievements in Diablo 4, even namechecking one that Grimes said she witnessed firsthand.
At the end of the conversation, Musk said he would consider allowing Asmongold to stream a SpaceX launch. “But he has to admit that I am a living god of video games. 🤣🤣.”
A few days after this conversation, the self-professed “living god of video games” would appear to Sieg Heil during Trump’s inauguration celebration. Twice. While biting his lip.